This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. People can move this bionic leg just by thinking about it What’s new: When someone loses part of a…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The generative AI boom is built on scale. The more training data, the more powerful the model. But…
When someone loses part of a leg, a prosthetic can make it easier to get around. But most prosthetics are static, cumbersome, and hard to move. A new neural interface connects a bionic limb to nerve endings in the thigh, allowing the limb…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How fish-safe hydropower technology could keep more renewables on the grid Hydropower is the world’s…
Hydropower is the world’s leading source of renewable electricity, generating more power in 2022 than all other renewables combined. But while hydropower is helping clean up our electrical grid, it’s not always a positive force for fish.…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How AI video games can help reveal the mysteries of the human mind Video gaming companies are…
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. This week I’ve been thinking about thought. It was…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Training AI music models is about to get very expensive AI music is suddenly in a make-or-break…
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Some people track sports scores or their favorite artists’ tour set lists. Meanwhile, I’m just…
AI music is suddenly in a make-or-break moment. On June 24, Suno and Udio, two leading AI music startups that make tools to generate complete songs from a prompt in seconds, were sued by major record labels. Sony Music, Warner Music Group,…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Supershoes are reshaping distance running Since 2016, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a paradigm…
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Whether you’ve flown a drone before or not, you’ve probably heard of DJI, or at…
Stijn Lemmens has a cleanup job like few others. A senior space debris mitigation analyst at the European Space Agency (ESA), Lemmens works on counteracting space pollution by collaborating with spacecraft designers and the wider industry…
The United States has an official web design system and a custom typeface. This public design system aims to make government websites not only good-looking but accessible and functional for all. Before the internet, Americans may have…
The philosopher Karl Popper once argued that there are two kinds of problems in the world: clock problems and cloud problems. As the metaphor suggests, clock problems obey a certain logic. They are orderly and can be broken down and…
In a November 1984 story for Technology Review, Carolyn Sumners, curator of astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, described how toys, games, and even amusement park rides could change how young minds view science and math.…
For children, play comes so naturally. They don’t have to be encouraged to play. They don’t need equipment, or the latest graphics processors, or the perfect conditions—they just do it. What’s more, study after study has found that play…
When Allan Gottlieb ’67 began editing the Puzzle Corner column in 1966, he was a junior at MIT, majoring in math. Little did he know then that he was undertaking a project that would last for nearly six decades. If you missed our previous…
Elizabeth Sajdel-Sulkowska was just three months old when Nazi soldiers set fire to her family’s home in the midst of the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, as the Polish resistance attempted to seize control of the city from the Germans.…
The trauma of an accident, an assault, abuse, or even simply losing someone we love can have long-term effects. For some, it can trigger mental illnesses. But what if, in the hours after the experience, you could take a pill that made you…
“I felt too fat to be a feminist in public.” The startling admission appears in the opening paragraph of Kate Manne’s new book, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia. With that single frank and sobering sentence, Manne, an associate professor…
It’s hard not to laugh at NASA’s blooper reel of astronauts falling and bouncing in slow motion on the moon. But coping with inertia where gravity is one-sixth that of Earth is no laughing matter when you’re wearing a constricting space…
In tropical waters, coral reefs shelter marine life and buffer islands from stormy seas—but these natural structures are threatened by the effects of climate change, which is also multiplying the extreme weather events that leave coastal…
In a series of painstakingly precise experiments, a team of researchers at MIT has confirmed an astonishing discovery: light can cause water to evaporate without involvement from any source of heat. The phenomenon can occur at any surface…
Using engineered mini-livers derived from donated human cells, MIT researchers have found that the time of day a drug is administered could significantly affect how much of it is available to the body and how much may be broken down into…
Most people’s sweat contains a protein that can prevent Lyme disease, researchers at MIT and the University of Helsinki have discovered. They also found that about one-third of the population carries a less protective variant that makes…
Colonoscopies are a boon for preventing colon cancer, but patients may develop gastrointestinal bleeding or dangerous small tears in the intestine if doctors end up having to remove polyps in the process. Now MIT researchers have developed…
Sparking Creativity: How Play and Humor Fuel Innovation and DesignBy Barry Kudrowitz, SM ’06, PhD ’10ROUTLEDGE, 2023, $39.95 Open Building for Architects: Professional Knowledge for an Architecture of Everyday EnvironmentBy Stephen H.…
From semiconductor manufacturing to mining, water is an essential commodity for industry. It is also a precious and constrained resource. According to the UN, more than 2.3 billion people faced water stress in 2022. Drought has cost the…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Supershoes are reshaping distance running Since 2016, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a paradigm…